The mind makes only a mediocre container for memories. Some sneak out the door the day they arrive, crafty as a cat, while others drip down the drain in a slow leak. When you search for them all you find is debris. Some memories mutate every time you examine them and never appear the same way twice. My mind used to have a large storage area for facts, stacked neatly, easily accessible during tests, but I visited the warehouse recently and everything had been cleaned out. Helloooo, I called, but there was only an echo. Old memories turn up like random socks stuck in a sleeve. Hey! What are you doing in there? There are times I am absolutely certain of the accuracy of a memory, but it’s wrong. Then there are feeling memories… how I felt when something occurred, and how I perceived someone else’s feelings. These are hopelessly tangled up like a pile of crazy string. What if I only think I felt something because I used it in a poem, but it transformed in my imagination? Can I revert back to the original? I need to visit the Container Store!
Rory has some great questions for us today as he continues his Friday Four prompt…
**What is more important to you – to be ‘Liked’ or to be Respected?’** What do you believe to be the difference between admiration and respect or do you find them to be the same?** Likability and friendship are two different things. Being likable to many is great, but being a great friend to a few (or one) is rare – what do you think to that statement – true or false, agree or disagree? How uniquely YOU are you in a world filled with variations of you anyway – what seperates YOU from the rest of the world and makes you Youniquely You??
1. Is it more important to me to be liked or respected? I know most people are going to say “respected” with some sort of comment about how they’re true to their values and would rather be respected for that than liked for smiling and going along. Well, I’m not most people. I would rather be liked as a helpful friend who is nice and funny and caring. I know for a fact there are people who see me this way but disrespect my values and political positions. I’m fine with that and I see no need to argue with them about issues none of us will budge on. This is why I don’t blather (much) about politics online. Not putting down those who do, but I’d rather keep my interactions positive.
2. Do I differentiate between admiration and respect? Yes, but it only works one way. What I mean is that if I respect someone, I can easily find something to admire about them, even something small. However, I can admire someone’s success without having respect for them as a person. Many celebs are in this category for me.
3. “Likability and friendship are two different things. Being likable to many is great, but being a great friend to a few (or one) is rare – what do you think to that statement – true or false, agree or disagree?” I obviously agree with this because I wrote it! Thanks, Rory, for including my thoughts. I know people who are liked by many ~ it seems important to them to collect as many “friends” as possible ~ but in my experience they are too busy spreading themselves around to have enough time and energy to focus on one true friendship. On the other hand, I know people who aren’t popular, but they will be there 100% for a few.
4. What makes me unique? Nothing! I don’t consider myself anything special, which is not meant to be a negative (see my remark about celebs). There’s nothing wrong with living a quiet, ordinary life and finding joy in small things.
Welcome to Thursday Inspiration! This is my weekly prompt and hopefully it will inspire you to write something creative, perhaps a poem or a piece of flash fiction. I will try to visit everyone who links back to this post. 🙂
This week’s theme is guitar and the picture is below. Here is the song snippet from “Guitar Man,” a 1972 song by Bread.
Night after night Who treats you right Baby, it’s the guitar man Who’s on the radio You go listen to the guitar man
Romance is full of velvet roses,
Champagne, dancing, moony lust.
Those things are transitory,
Soon left to crumble into dust.
I’d rather have a loyal friend,
Someone I can fully trust,
True companions till the end…
Let the extraneous fade away; Begone the chaos of the day, For I cannot control time’s cascade. Instead I focus on the small: A leaf, a bud, the soothing rain, The wind that whispers down the hall. If I am mindful when night falls, Will I sense an order to it all?
Michelle’s words reverberated in Owen’s mind as he hugged her goodbye. He had deviatedfrom their “no strings attached” arrangement this afternoon and proffered his heart. She’d gone paleimmediately and reminded him of their agreement to remain emotionally uninvolved.
“I tried,” he told her. “I failed! Can you honestly admit you feel nothing for me after all these months?”
Michelle just shook her head and put on her coat. “You know what I have to do.”
“Yes.” He nodded. “And I can go with you. I know it’ll be tough, but together we—”
She held up a hand and interrupted. “Where I go, no one can follow. I’m sorry, Owen. My mission is more important than a romance.”
He’d walked her to the dock, feeling angry, but that soon morphed into a piercing sadness. Owen knew he couldn’t change her mind, no matter what he said.
“Thank you for understanding,” Michelle said now as she stepped away.
Owen didn’t understand, but he watched her stride toward the nondescript foreign boat, the scent of her citrus perfume still hovering in the air.
PCGuyIV has some delicious questions for us today…
Are you an adventurous eater, or do you prefer to play it safe when you’re feeling peckish?
Do you prefer dining in or dining out?
When you dine in, who does the cooking?
When you dine out, do you tend to stick to places you know, or do you look for new places to try?
1. I’m not super adventurous. The edgiest thing I tried was raw fish back in 1987. I really liked it, and sushi/sashimi became one of my favorite dishes until I began reading so many articles about parasites (that was the biggest reason I waited so long to try it in the first place, but then was persuaded it’s safe here). However, in 2016 a poke bowl made me sick for a month, so I haven’t had any raw fish since. Mostly, I eat the same things, or slight variations, day after day.
2. I like eating at home, though it’s nice to occasionally have dinner out with people (not so much during a plague). The issue with restaurant food is that it’s oversalted and otherwise unhealthful. The portions are gigantic, so even if I don’t finish something salty and unhealthful, I still end up eating too much of it. 🙁
3. Who cooks? This guy…
I wouldn’t call what I do “cooking” these days. I’ll make a salad or sandwich, maybe an omelet or a grilled cheese. I’ll nuke a veggie burger or some other frozen goodie. When I was still going to friend-events, sometimes I’d bake a cake or some cookies.
4. If it were up to me, I’d stick to places I know and like, but others sometimes want to try new restaurants. Generally, I will order something familiar even at a new place. I do want to try a new restaurant I saw the other day called Plant Power. It’s all veggie fast food, mostly burgers. Mmm.. 😋
Melanie has some new Q’s for us today, and again they are preceded by Potter Q’s from Roger.
Roger’s Magical, Mystical Questions:
1. Have you ever driven the wrong way on a one-way street? How did this come about?
Right after I moved to California, I had a doctor’s appointment in Pasadena. I got a bit lost and didn’t realize I was on a one-way street. I started to make a left turn from the right lane and the guy in the left lane hit me. It was my fault, of course. He was nice and helped me figure out how to get to the doc’s.
2. As a kid, did you ever decide to run away? Did you have a plan? Take a pet? Sandwiches?
I was 17 and “ran away” for a day because my parents were driving me nuts. I had cash and a car, so I picked up a friend and we went to lunch. At first, she said she’d run away too, but she changed her mind. I drove 50 miles into Chicago and ate dinner alone. Then I turned around and went home.
3. You suddenly found you have a hidden talent for playing a musical instrument. What musical instrument do you hope that accompanies your talent? Any particular song?
It would be great to be able to play the piano well. Any song.
4. Do you accessorize with jewelry? There was an opal necklace (cursed) and Slytherin’s locket (also cursed) in the Potter story. Have you had any heirloom jewelry passed down through the generations? Is it more ‘keepsake’ or do you wear it on occasion? (Hopefully, yours was not cursed?)
Yes, I wear jewelry every day, usually silver. Mostly I wear a silver bracelet that’s a chain of hearts and some other stuff depending on my outfit. I do not have any heirlooms, only a few things that belonged to my parents.
Melanie’s Ordinary Muggle Questions:
1. What ingredients go into YOUR favorite salad?
Lately I’m not so much into leaves, so my favorite salad is cut tomatoes, carrots, cucumber, and of course avocado. A drizzle of balsamic dressing is good on that.
2. If you care to, share something that really irritates you.
Red light runners.
3. What are your favorite ‘lounging around the house’ items of clothing? Now that a lot of people ‘lounge around the house’ waiting for the all clear in respect to Covid being shown the door, have those lounging items changed?
I like yoga pants and a big tee or sweatshirt. When it’s cooler, I’ll wear cozy socks. This hasn’t changed since the plague.
GRATITUDE (as always this is optional)
Please feel free to share something about Autumn (or Spring if you’re gearing up for that) that you especially enjoy!
Smiles and positive posts are all well and good, but sometimes I need to vent a bit. How about you? That’s what The Monday Peeve is all about, a chance to blow off a little steam at the beginning of the week, so then we can go merrily on our way once again (hah). I’ll pick a topic that’s on my mind, but you can vent about whatever you please, here in comments or on your own blog. Grab the photo, use the TMP tag, link back to me (or not), and Bob’s yer uncle. I do reserve the right to delete any links that offend my delicate sensibilities. So far, none have, but it could happen. I have feelings!
Doesn’t it annoy you when someone says something like “you can do a thing because that person did the thing?” Whatever it is — quitting smoking, getting rid of migraines, exercising more, publishing a book, finding true love, etc. — the premise is that someone else did it so I can too. Huh. So we’re all the same, a giant mass of cookies cut from the same dough the same way, and if one of us survives being stomped on by an elephant, then the rest of us can too. Did you know that some woman somewhere wrote a novel in the middle of the night after taking care of kids, job, house, hubby, found an agent after querying 500,000 of them, and is now on the bestseller list, negotiating movie rights, and buying a mansion? Ergo, I should have been able to do this as well.
There are variations to this theme. A particular irksome one is that X group of people are successful, so Y group has no excuse for not being successful also. This not only assumes that all people are the same and started out in the same circumstances, BUT ALSO have been treated the same by others. Another variation is the person who got lucky with an investment, is now all smug about his “brilliance,” and drones on that other people should be smarter about money, when it was JUST LUCK that he hit it big. We don’t hear about his other thousand investments that tanked, just the one fabulous pick.
Our musical host Jim Adams gives us the theme of Canadian this week. So many of the singers I love are Canadian it was hard to choose. I finally went with Jann Arden and her smash hit “Insensitive.” This song was written by Anne Loree and recorded by Jann in 1994 for her album Living Under June. The song did well, reaching No. 12 in the US and No. 1 in Canada and Australia. Anne says she wrote the song in a half hour while feeling broken-hearted from a romance.
Jann was born in Calgary in 1962. She was discovered by a talent agent and worked with him for 13 years. She’s been an actor as well as a singer and has written 4 memoirs, including one about taking care of her mom through Alzheimer’s. In 2018, Jann released an album, These Are The Days, with songs about difficult times. She also has a podcast and a TV show fictionalizing her life. [Wiki]
Insensitive
How do you cool your lips after a summer’s kiss? How do you rid the sweat after the body bliss? How do you turn your eyes from the romantic glare? How do you block the sound Of a voice you’d know anywhere? Oh, I really should have known By the time you drove me home By the vagueness in your eyes, your casual goodbyes By the chill in your embrace The expression on your face, told me Maybe, you might have some advice to give On how to be insensitive, insensitive, ooh, insensitive How do you numb your skin after the warmest touch? How do you slow your blood after the body rush? How do you free your soul after you’ve found a friend? How do you teach your heart It’s a crime to fall in love again? Oh, you probably won’t remember me It’s probably ancient history I’m one of the chosen few Who went ahead and fell for you I’m out of vogue, I’m out of touch I fell too fast I feel too much I thought that you might have some advice to give On how to be insensitive Oh, I really should have known By the time you drove me home By the vagueness in your eyes, your casual goodbyes By the chill in your embrace The expression on your face that told me Maybe, you might have some advice to give On how to be insensitive (how to be) Insensitive (how to be) Insensitive (how to be)
